GAMBLING HAUNTS IN LONDON WEST END

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 259, 20 July 1918, Page 8

GAMBLING HAUNTS IN LONDON WEST END

— 4 LONELY WOMEN LURED. Gambling at chemin de fer and poker and tnro in London has reached the fever temperature (says a writer in the "Evening News"), and, heavily worked though the police are, it becomes necessary to inquire if it is impossible to wipe' out the small gang-it is relatively a small gang—that has turned gambling into one of the most fattening of win- trades. The gambling craze is not only in the West End, but the East as well; the difrerenco is that the West End gambling shows are too fastidious to touch faro They leave that to the little 'gamblers, of the East End. For the West End there are cheinin de fer and*poker; ami as six out of ten of the' players are women, and women do not as a" rule seo anything attractive iii the sporting side of poker, chemiji do fer is the gaino of the moment. "

I have seen wealthy men, mostly from the provincial war nwterial manufacturing towns, go into the dens in '.he gambling region that radiates, say, from Baker Street, with their eyes open, and I have no pity for them. They belong to. that eternal type which thinks it can bent the ■ thief at thieving. They are gamblers for the same reason that drug-takers and dipsomaniacs are what they arc. They can't help it. But there are the women, A man said to me, "You cannot pay that a decent, honestniiuded woman, car. be got into thjse places. That kind of woman simply does not gamble." I dispute it on the same grounds that I should dispute the statement that black is white. The organisation does not say crudely: "Come to No. So-atid-sr> of This sStreet or That, and have a gamble." The woman with as much leisure as money is approached by sideways devices. She finds heiwlf ntnniig delightful amusing people. "A little gamo of cards" is introduced w> an unimportant incident. It is quite (•usual—as casual us the greeting of "How (l'yoii do?" Thoroughly "nice" people; n game of chemin de fer thrown in unthinkingly; the lady has won ,£2O; nobody blinks an eye; the gamo is'forgotten an soon :is it's over; and, having pulled off the price of a now frock in this harmless and casual way—well, the lndy returns; nnd the bank account of that lady is a very dreadful matter in a few weeks.

At 3 o'clock wo go to n Knmbliiißlionse. How do you get to knew Ihe nddress? You don't if you arc only a or oCIOO man or woinan. But "the smartest mnitres d'botel and head waiters are unwittingly the instrumenls, foniptinips. of tlio confrdcrntc" s . wlin i»o to the restaurants as part of tlicir dnily hiisinpss to set at tlio lonely moil ami women with l.ioiu'.v, who are to l.e discovered every dnv in every London hotel.